OpenAI buys Astral, pledges to keep Python tools open
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- OpenAI announced Thursday an agreement to acquire Astral, the company behind the open source Python tools uv, Ruff, and ty, and plans to fold Astral into its Codex team.
- Astral's tool stack is widely adopted: uv draws 126 million monthly downloads, Ruff pulls 179 million, and ty (still in beta) has 19 million, making them foundational infrastructure for Python developers.
- Astral founder Charlie Marsh launched the company three years ago with $4 million in seed funding and pledged in a blog post that OpenAI "will continue supporting our open source tools" and that Astral will "keep building in the open."
- OpenAI confirmed it will keep supporting the open source projects after the deal closes, while exploring tighter integration with Codex so AI agents can "work more directly with the tools developers already rely on every day."
- The acquisition is the latest salvo in OpenAI's intensifying fight with Anthropic's Claude Code: Anthropic acquired Bun, a JavaScript runtime with 7 million monthly downloads, last November, and OpenAI also acquired open source LLM security tool Promptfoo earlier this month.
Why it matters: The deal gives Codex direct ownership of tools running on more than 300 million combined monthly Python downloads, deepening OpenAI's grip on the developer stack it is racing to dominate against Anthropic. For the millions of Python developers who depend on uv, Ruff, and ty, the acquisition hinges on whether OpenAI's open-source pledge holds; Anthropic's Bun integration sets the recent precedent to watch.
